[P2P-F] Fwd: The West

Tue Jul 17 16:44:08 CEST 2018


On 17/07/2018 09:08, Michel Bauwens wrote:
> what do people think of this narrative ?
It seems to me a welcome re-balancing of the stories many of us grew up 
with.
Denis
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: *r kanth* <involutegandhian at gmail.com 
> <mailto:involutegandhian at gmail.com>>
> Date: Mon, Jul 16, 2018 at 11:39 PM
> Subject: Fwd: The West
> To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com 
> <mailto:michelsub2004 at gmail.com>>
>
>
>
>
>
> *The West*
>
> /A View from Without*/
>
> */Europeans has been , for centuries, a ruthless, aggressive Empire, 
> leastways as viewed by many of itsNon-European subjects: Cansuch 
> Empiresdo good? It’s possible: but virtues achieved via vicious means 
> may not be perceived/received as such by its victims;much like slaves, 
> who might baulk, at being asked to considerbenign aspects -if any- of 
> Slavery. /
>
> /More importantly,the glories of European achievements are all too 
> well eulogizedby Europhiles, and fill libraries upon libraries, the 
> subject matter of legend and lore;less so, criticisms of this kind, 
> whence I feel no compulsion to be ‘balanced’ in what I say. This 
> is,unabashedly, a Critique: buta verifiable one; neither specious, nor 
> casuistic. /
>
> /And why do I articulate it? As in the current, highly visible, 
> struggles against racism and sexism, the historical iniquities of 
> Empire and Colonialism must be kept in focus: lest we forget. Of 
> course, as a ‘Gandhian’ ( at least , in some regards) , forgiveness 
> for such sinsis assumed, here, as an article of faith, ipso facto: the 
> tale being told with reason, not rancor./
>
> **
>
> For at least four centuries, the world has lived/struggled under the 
> European heel/harrow.
>
> The latter did not streak ahead of the former by virtue of its prowess 
> in /any field/ , but one:
>
> /War./
>
> And /genocide/, wherever/whenever it was meet.
>
> The primary, if not sole, motivation was - in summary abbreviation - 
> /commerce/.
>
> /It is so still:/ with/finance/ and /war /the only really robust, 
> active agencies , today, within the NATO ambit.
>
> Amongst the European tribes – yes, /tribes: /it’s not just Africans 
> and Native Americans who were tribal –the Anglo Normans pulled head of 
> others (notably France and Spain and the Dutch: later, Germany, Italy, 
> /et. al.)/ , again largely by virtue of their /martial /superiority.
>
> At least in the first instance , this/intra-Euro/ superiority of the 
> Anglo-Normans did /not/ stem from /technology/: naval technologies 
> were , arguably, broadly similar between France , Spain , and England.
>
> But, rather , I venture, from sheer /valor/ , (/i.e., /readiness to 
> die, take improbable risks, for King and Country) , irrepressible 
> aggressiveness, anddogged, superhuman persistence against, often , 
> impossible odds.
>
> Unfathomable /Heroism/, even of the idiot kind (/vide/ ‘The Charge of 
> the Light Brigade’) was a sort of a /cachet./
>
> Ataste, nay /zeal,/ for war, one might say,unequalled by any - other 
> than a few martial tribes of North West of India, no less valiant, 
> violent, and aggressive.
>
> Lands , labors, minerals, and ideas/techniques were, thereby, 
> willy-nilly, extracted/appropriated wherever/whenever possible: with 
> resisting natives decimated without ruth, or compunction.
>
> Pirates and plunderers, in short.
>
> *
>
> /Via/ such lofty means/ mechanisms, Europe, the /poorest , least 
> endowed of the continents/ (/imp. caveat/: /Europe is NOT a 
> continent,/ but rather a /sub-continent/ like India) amassed the 
> enormous ‘wealth’ ( /as defined/understood withinan EM calculus, that 
> is)/ it has now.
>
> Now it is easy to see why the empires of India and China did not go 
> about pillaging the rest of the world.
>
> They had resource blessings in abundance /within their own bounds,/ so 
> much so that in the 17^th century India and Chinaaccounted , perhaps, 
> for about 50% of world’s GDP.
>
> India (/i.e.,/ its various /empires,/in aggregate terms) was 
> /fabulously/ wealthy: and China was thriving.
>
> /Which is why Europe –with its chronic poverty/dearth of resources , 
> specially specie - made a bee-line for it/, like Senor 
> Columbus,buccaneer, pirate, and mass-murderer: to catastrophic effect.
>
> In less than two centuries /of outright marauding/, the regionof India 
> , home to amongst the oldest /continuous/ civilisations ( preceding 
> Greece by thousands of years) on the planet, was reduced to its 
> beggarly ‘third world status’ , when the Brits finally left , 
> mid-century, after making their due, if quite forgettable, 
> ‘contribution’ to the sub-continent.
>
> /Needless to add , the enrichment of Europe was related to the imposed 
> destitution of the Non-European world./
>
> Arguably, ancient India, long beforethe European (so-called) 
> ‘Enlightenment’, madecontributions to arts, scienceandphilosophy not 
> merely comparable to pre-Enlightenment Europe , but ineffably 
> superior, and far, far prior.
>
> Yes, tonote, purely /en passant/, but two indices, they had something 
> close to flushing toilets in ancient Mohen Jo Daro: and calculus was 
> invented not by Messrs. Newton and Leibniz, but in India (Kerala), 
> from whence it travelled , unacknowledged , as usual, to Europe (/btw 
> I use ‘India’ to refer to the original civilization that inhabited the 
> sub-continent, not to the modern(ist) political entity that bears that 
> name today/), centuries later.
>
> No , they won’t teach that bit of trivia (!) in most of the European 
> world, even in academe, like so much else.
>
> /It doesn’t fit the narrative /
>
> In much the he same way, Hegel described Africa, of his time, as at 
> the very ‘infancy’ of human history incapable of civilization: in 
> effect denying that Egypt was a Black , Nubian , civilisation , a 
> denial that racist Europe maintained late into the 20^th century.
>
> At any rate, most European languages ‘derive’ from Sanskrit, and the 
> dominant ‘Christian’ ideational prepossessionof Europe today - real or 
> phony - also hails from India: /Christianity , arguably, is an 
> offshoot of Classical Buddhism,/ whose mighty philosophical sweep 
> extended from the Mediterranean to Japan, in its heyday .
>
> Of course, Europe swiftly ‘/modernized’/ classical Christianity (after 
> its ‘enlightenment’/) via/ the so-called ‘Reformation’ , to make it 
> ‘fit’ its zeal for /capital accumulation/ (by repealing various 
> restrictions placed upon it by the Catholic church, as, /e.g.,/ in 
> Canon Law).
>
> Interestingly, /no major (or minor) religion ever evolved within 
> Europe/, unless a heartfelt /Mammon worship /is ascribed that status.
>
> I happen to think that significant.
>
> *
>
> Once launched ,and stabilized,18^th century on, commerce and industry 
> , within European empires, expanded (after theirown native, peasant 
> populationswere suitably dispossessed) /via /technical and commercial 
> innovations , even as moreconventional expropriationsfrom its colonies 
> continued, enhanced ( as to this day)
>
> The Anglo-Normans pulled ahead of Europe in productive and military 
> technologies, until their German cousins( eventually to be , if only 
> grudgingly acknowledged , world leaders, in such areas ) caught up , 
> and surpassed them, by the end of the 19^th century, much to their 
> chagrin.
>
> The so-called ‘World’ Wars were no more than /European Wars of 
> Empire/, that dragged in the ‘world’ (Japan was the only 
> /Non/-European empire to be so involved, much like Ottoman Turkey, 
> long prior).
>
> This, of course, is an imminent possibility even now.
>
> War is , and has ever been, to European rulers both an important 
> amphetamine and aphrodisiac, aside from being the lead activity/sector 
> for generations.
>
> Indeed, I would venture, /if they had their will/, NATO would have 
> branch offices in New Delhi, Beijing , Seoul, and Tokyo.
>
> *
>
> The origin of European /Racism -/the clear scourge of our times - lay 
> simply in their relatively facile domination of the world for 
> centuries ( a casual reviewof ancient Greeks - asthe great Martin 
> Bernal notes - who had much interaction with Eastern ideas , does not 
> betray any overtly/racist /ideology of superiority).
>
> After all, if you have subdued the peoples of this world , at nominal 
> cost/effort , the belief may follow,like the US, in ‘manifest 
> destiny’: or, like Europe (and not merely amongst Nazis) ,in a ‘master 
> race’ of ‘supermen’.
>
> Of course, the ‘cure’ for such pretensions is the turn of history 
> itself: by any reckoning, China, India, and Russia (perhaps in that 
> order) are the emergent ‘super powers’ of the future(again using 
> Western indices).
>
> And they will indubitably tone down any and all fantasies of white 
> supremacy - like Trump’s boast of making the US ‘great’ again -not by 
> any direct action, but by their very (countervailing) presence.
>
> /Thus does ambition check ambition, and diamond(s) cut diamond(s)./
>
> So, /Euro-Racism/ will , over time, succumb, harmlessly,tothe rank of 
> petty chauvinisms that characterize(d) most so-called ‘developed’ 
> societies on this planet.
>
> Genocide, also, will, as such, will/might gradually recede from history.
>
> *
>
> So, can we then conclude that all’s headed to the good here, despite 
> the manifestiniquities of our times?
>
> No.
>
> I fear not.
>
> In fact, far from it.
>
> The EM legacy is now wantonly embraced by the entire world (including 
> China, India , and Russia).,/via/ generations of overt regime change, 
> clandestine subversion, and endless propaganda.
>
> Whence we may wellhave the same game on, as we do at this time : /of 
> continuing, untrammeled , societal and ecological destruction -/ 
> albeit, with brand new players.
>
> As a /curiosum,/ this was an outcome at least partially- if not 
> entirely correctly - foreseen by Marx in his final years (of a 
> ‘socialist’ Europe undermined by an emergent , ‘capitalist’ Asia).
>
> /In effect, we are all Europeans (i.e., EuroModernists) now./
>
> Doubtless, as the /ancient regime gradually /slips, in its economic 
> and political reach , it will turn to a hypertrophic enhancement of 
> its /military /capability, a fact already visible in our times.
>
> Faltering dragons may be more aggressive than normal ones.
>
> But it will not prevail:/save in the intent (if any) to blow up a 
> world it can no longer rule./
>
> Will it?
>
> Remains to be seen.
>
> Thomas Jefferson wrote, with unusual compunction, in a relatively more 
> circumscribed era:
>
> ‘/when I consider there is a just god in heaven, I tremble for the 
> fate of my country/’.
>
> Of course: If he merely /trembled /then, might he not be /shuddering/ now?
>
> I wonder.
>
> REFERENCES
>
> Kanth, R./Breaking with the Enlightenment/, NJ: Humanities Press, 1997
>
> _______/Farewell to Modernism/, NY: Peter Lang, 2017
>
> *[©R.Kanth 2018] *
>
>
>
>
>
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